KL deportations strain intra-ASEAN relations

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – A bitter row over Malaysia’s treatment of illegal immigrants has rekindled old animosities and revealed the new strains that different levels of economic development have placed on regional relations.

Relatively rich Malaysia has been denounced in the Philippines and Indonesia as "arrogant." "insulting" and "inhumane" for driving hundreds of thousands of impoverished migrant workers out of the country, and caning and jailing those who fail to flee.

In turn, some commentators in Malaysia, a fellow member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), have taken the attitude that the plight of the migrant workers should be laid at the doors of their own governments.

Indonesian illegal immigrants are "the victims of official corruption, which has over the last half a century impoverished" a potentially rich country, the president of Transparency International Malaysia, Abdul Aziz, wrote in the New Straits Times.

"It sounds terribly hollow and hypocritical to talk about human rights for their illegals in Malaysia when it is the denial of human rights at home – the rights to food, drinking water, housing, security and employment – that have driven millions of Filipinos and Indonesians to the four corners of the globe to escape from the grinding poverty."

These sentiments have been repeated in editorials and letters to editors, with some also complaining that "Malaysians are living in fear of the illegal immigrants, especially the Indonesians, because of their involvement in numerous horrendous crimes – rapes, robberies and murders."

The war of words has also thrown up references to dormant but dangerous old disputes between the neighboring countries.

Demonstrators in the Philippines have revived long-standing claims to Malaysia’s Sabah state, where most of the Filipino illegal immigrants lived.

In Indonesia, protestors have demanded the Indonesian government sever diplomatic relations and threatened to open a "Crush Malaysia" front similar to the one that founding president Sukarno employed during his military confrontation with Malaysia in the mid-1960s.

But the governments themselves have been far more restrained.

"We urge everyone to be cautious so that the good ties we have already forged can be well maintained," said top Indonesian security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.